More on MRTs

I’m back home from a couple of good days with the Mountain Equipment team in Manchester. I was speaking in lecture at the ME store talking about trying to arrive at a confident state for heading back up to Orkney again for sessions on my project. To help with that I finally got a nice day to head out with Anna and do some tradding. This is the difficulty in Scotland sometimes - Although I feel quite fit now from Steall and board sessions, there’s no substitute for going out and leading a lot of long routes (if your training for a long trad route). So I made the most of it and did some of the lovely multipitch E5s on Dirc Mhor while watching the Golden Eagle soaring about at the other end of the glen. Wet holds at Steall defeated another new route from happening, but the main thing was that workouts were had...

My post on mountain rescue a few days ago attracted some attention as I thought it might. Most seemed to welcome or share my thoughts. I had one long comment that was rejected by blogger because of it’s length (addressed below) suggesting many of my suggestions for raising funds had been adopted, at least by some teams. Thats great. I hope it’s working well. My feeling is that it certainly could be given the strength of the resource. My underlying point with my post was that I hope the temptation to blame the outside world for not offering as much support as they could or noticing the products etc that teams produce for them is resisted. 

The difference between a campaign to raise funds that either falls short of a good result or does spectacularly well can be so subtle and dependent on countless aspects of how it’s presented, timed and mediated. In the case of mountain rescue the challenge seems clear to me which is to reach the vast majority who despite being very interested in climbing, are not interested in supporting mountain rescue, as harsh as that sounds. That majority are very unlikely to find themselves on an MRT site unless there’s a very interesting article or video taking them there. 

Some of the comments focused on my idea about books. If the book produced by the MRT isn’t on Amazon and that’s the only place you go to shop for books, then it doesn’t exist. And just being there is not enough, it needs to pop up beside those books you are searching for. Have you seen how popular the dramatic tales of climbing epics are on Amazon? It needs to be a ‘book’ not a ‘booklet’ (I’ve never bought anyone a booklet for Christmas) and the fact that the proceeds go to mountain rescue needs to be more in the background so as not to raise a question in the mind of the buyer about the quality of what they are going to get. And does the cover ‘work’ at 150 pixels high?

Here was Judy’s comments below in italics, with some responses to each point from me:

"Hi Dave

Great to see you talking about mountain rescue and coming up with some thoughts. Entirely agree with you on the tweeting and retweeting!

Just a few points though in response to your points.

The safety angle: both at team level and nationally, we spend a great deal of our time spreading the message about what to take with you (map, compass, correct kit etc,) what to do before you go (weather checking, training in appropriate skills etc) and how to stay safe whilst out there. You'll find info like this on any team's website and it's certainly contained on the Mountain Rescue England and Wales site. Team members spend a deal of time, every week, giving talks and slide shows about their work, including the safety aspect.

We also write and publish books on the subject. 'Call Out Mountain Rescue?' is available for £9.99 from mountain.rescue.org.uk - all proceeds to MREW.”

Its great that MRTs spread the word on safety. If MRTs could act as a catalyst for climbers at large to spread the word about safety, rather than having to shoulder the effort so directly, it might increase the reach greatly. What video or writing do you have or can get that climbers will want to show eachother? 

“Re the topos idea - although we DO count several MIs in our ranks, we're not instructors. Our job is to pick up the pieces, if you will, not be prescriptive to people about which routes they take or how they rope themselves.”

That’s unfortunate. Prescriptive maybe not, but advisory on where and how the accidents happen on specific spots would be most welcome. How else are you going to get that vast majority who aren’t interested in what you do onto your site?

“That said, we DO work with both the AMI and the BMC to promote safe practice.

Stories: yep we have them in bulk and they're sent to the press/radio and TV by all teams and nationally probably every day of the week. The problem is, we have no control over whether these make it into print.”

Yes you do. Present the stories well enough and the press can’t afford not to follow. Besides, you are the press now anyway. The internet leads the press. The variables limiting reach are the strength of the presentation of the stories and the best use of the channels to present them.

“Local press DO support their local teams but it's not easy to persuade the bigger fish to run stories. Nationally, it's stuff like floods, missing children or smartphone apps that make the papers and TV. That said, the last couple of years have seen an increase in mags and Sunday supplements, and documentary makers showing an interest in our work. It's a constant work-in-progress.”

This gives me two thoughts - are the subset of everyone who you need to reach (the ones who might buy a book about mountain stories, watch a video, read a good article etc) best reached using newspapers or TV? Do those media catch the right people at the right time, and make it easy enough for them to take one of the fund raising clicks you want them to take? I would have my doubts. For example, I’ve never taken my newspaper home and typed in a URL at the end of piece.

"Re the books, there's 'Mountain Rescue', by myself and Bob Sharp, which contains lots of anecdotes, history and details about mountain rescue in the UK. I look forward to your order via the MREW website!!”

I’m never on the MREW website. I didn’t know it was there as I’ve never seen anyone link to it.

“Mechanism for contacting those we rescue? You're working with it. The net. Teams will generally keep in touch with those they have rescued, and those rescued are frequently our best advocates and fundraisers. We also keep in touch with people through Basecamp membership, Facebook pages and in our Mountain Rescue magazine.”

Great!

“Many teams use Twitter, although I believe there are inherent problems with this as a medium as there may be circumstances where it is neither sensitive not advisable to post on-going details of rescues, for example in missing persons searches or fatalities, before these have been officially released.”

Sure.

“And we're not really in the business of posting weather updates - there are Met Office and mountain weather websites and apps set up specifically for this. Many teams and MREW have links to these sites.”

That’s unfortunate. It seems a shame to send users away from your site rather than attract them to it using the one piece of information they need to check every time they go climbing. There’s an emerging massive gap in the web market for carefully aggregated local information for mountain users that’s presented in a useful way. It’s a web design and marketing problem. Someone will take the space, soon. If it’s not you it’ll be a gear retailer, or maybe even just some geek who also likes to climb. That would a shame. It comes back to my original point - MRTs will never be able to raise funds by appealing to fear or responsibility. It will have to deal in something that climbers want to have, do or experience. Chris Anderson’s book has a lot that would be useful for MRT fundraisers I think.

“Bigger business: Again, yes we DO have various sponsors in place as you describe. Not QUITE as easy to get big companies on board as you might think but those we have are very supportive of MR. They include Victorinox, btw. Many companies support teams and many clothing manufacturers work closely with teams and MREW in the ongoing development of kit.

Finally, we are always looking for ambassadors for mountain rescue who can spread the word and help us raise awareness. Fancy a job? The salary is good - £0 - but the satisfaction level is brilliant. Drop me a line if you do!

Judy Whiteside (Mountain Rescue Magazine Editor)”

Great comment. Thanks Judy. I understand my point of view might seem ignorant of the problems. That’s true - I am, because I have an outsiders perspective and it’s not my area. My points are two very general ones - that there is a resource there which could be used to greater advantage, and that there are new opportunities emerging right now because of how media is changing that make it a lot easier to raise funds if the right moves are made.

Fresh visits to Orkney begin

St John’s Head, Hoy, Orkney. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? I am in the picture, but you'll probably not spot me.

I just got back from two days work on my project on Orkney with progress made. Fitness is starting to materialise at last, a finger injury is becoming less and less of a bother, and logistics are ironing out.

Cleaning a new finish

I was keen to see if it was possible to finish the route over a series of roofs right at the top of the wall. So rather than the original finish skirting out right around the roofs for an easy escape, the last pitch is a ~ 70 metre pitch of around 8b+ on the top rope. Although I don’t how it’ll feel with a rack of big camalots for such a long pitch on my harness? I had thought it was going to weigh in around 8c but a miniscule foothold discovery on the crux on this trip might just take the edge off it. It's funny how a foothold about 1mm square will probably determine the overall difficulty of a 500m climb. Pics by John Sutherland.

A long pitch, and there’s 450m of climbing to get here!

John feeling the space

Brushing steeeep rock

It turns out that I should be able to lead this final 15m section through the roofs on three small cams. Since taking a belay instead would have been on two Camalot 4s, I'm actually saving weight on the crux pitch rack by pressing on all the way to the top. Happy days.

A fine rack

1945 bomber wreckage, Cuilags

Shootin the Stromness breeze

Mountain Rescue - how to raise funds?

In the last three days I’ve heard a few things about Mountain Rescue teams and how to raise funds for them. First, I was chatting to a friend about raising funds for a rescue team with a shortfall right now. He was trying to think of ideas to raise funds directly by increasing donations or by generating cash by business activities. Second, I was asked (as I often am) to post on my blog and retweet messages pointing at Mountain Rescue sites, or other charitable organisations.  Third, I was listening to Stephen Fry on Radio 4 today talking about how he is asked continuously to retweet messages of all types (charitable and corporate) and how doing this just doesn’t work for either party in the long run.

Occasionally, it is right to talk about a charitable organisation, when you do some work for them or have a direct personal involvement of some kind. For instance recently when I was at an event for the Linda Norgrove Foundation, a charity I’m hoping to keep a personal involvement with in the future. But Stephen’s point was that the whole idea of a person having a blog or twitter feed is that it’s personal - it’s about you. Distorting that once in a while to promote is OK so long as it has personal meaning for you, but overdo it, and in the long run it’s unsustainable. It just doesn’t work, like spam.

I can see why organisations try to harness the established audience of someone well known in the relevant field in order to get promotional mileage. But if it’s purely a spam exercise it’s destined for an extemely poor success rate. Much better to involve those people directly in some meaningful way if you are going to use them at all. However, in my view, there is a better way, at least in the case of a charity seeking to raise funds. Rather than rely heavily on others to carry the promotional torch down a blind alley, it would be better to utilise the intrinsic value of the organisation itself to generate the necessary reach among the desired audience. So the challenge for the organisation is firstly to figure out what they have that could be of value to their target audience, and then to share it with them in a way that raises funds along the way. Things of value can come in all shapes or sizes. Off the top of my head, if I was running a rescue team, here’s a few things I’d work on:

1. The first thing rescue teams have of value is general knowledge about how to stay safe and move about on mountains, as well as specific local knowledge about the mountains they pull people off day in day out. Mountain guides and centres use this very effectively to fuel their marketing. Rescue teams could do it too, but add a different perspective. Writing online, training events, lectures on mountain safety are all good fundraisers. I’d love to see an article on why you, like so many novice winter climbers are going to get stuck high on Tower Ridge on the Ben and have to call out a team to bail you out. I’d like to see a good annotated topo of the ridge showing where you can move together instead of pitching your way straight into a benightment, how you can escape from the ridge by abseil or ledges and where climbers commonly end up stuck. The URL for that kind of piece will get the retweets without having to ask, as well as maybe even helping to cut the expenditure?!

2. The other obvious aspect of rescue teams’ work that gets people talking is rescue stories. As any new marketer will tell you, marketing revolves around stories, and rescue teams have them in bulk. Whereas many corporate stories are fake and boring, mountain rescue stories are some of the most gripping ever. The ethics and presentation of them are a discussion for another day, but a blog chronicling the activities of a rescue team in the same style (but with more detail) than in the SMC journal would be a very interesting and educational blog. And one which I could envisage getting a lot of incoming links from some highly useful websites (like the BBC!). Some use of Twitter to relate up to date info on hill conditions, especially overnight, would be a very subscribed feed also. And this aspect of a team’s work is exactly the right type of relationship that is needed with potential donors or customers - a regular one with constant reminders. A one off shot, like a piece on the news or a newspaper just pales in comparison in terms of it’s long term value.

3. Marketing fear and responsibility (e.g. “support the rescue team, you might need them someday”) has been shown in so many other fields such as health to have a poor success rate (understatement). Hence, marketing to the majority of the audience who have never used the service and probably don’t even want to think about the day they might need to demands the approach above - a positive one. On the other hand, those who have had to use the rescue services will have a very different attitude. Is there any mechanism in place to keep in contact with these people and make it easy for them to exercise their gratitude for the service, both immediately and down the line (when they are CEOs of big companies etc)?

4. Donations are important, but sell things too. If there was a good book or stories and pictures from dramatic rescues in the mountains I visit, I’d buy it. I bet those who only go to the visitor centre at the bottom would too. Why let some commercial journalist write it and take the revenue? - write and publish it yourself. 

5.Align to bigger business. For certain companies, a badge that says they support, or better still donate a percentage of their profits to mountain rescue is a tool they can use for their own marketing. In other words, it adds value for them, and you. These alliances are there for the taking. Let others sell donations for you. Sponsorship is another way. I saw the ‘Red Devils’ parachute team on the telly tonight, wearing Victorinox logos. 

I know these ideas aren’t new, complete or detailed and have no idea how much they have been tried or would be suitable. My point is that the status quo is far short of ideal. The folk who are involved directly with the problem will need to iron out the details of solutions, as an outsider looking in it seems to me that a different approach could yield some much bigger results. I hope thinking aloud about this is more useful than retweeting a request for donations?

Lecture next week in Manchester

Next Thursday I’m doing a lecture at the Mountain Equipment store in Manchester. All the details are above. It’s been up on ME’s facebook for a couple of days so there are only about 10-15 tickets left I’ve just heard. So get in there quick. Tickets are free - just ring the store on the number on the poster or register on the facebook page. See you there!

Hoy on the horizon

Now after four weeks of thrashing it out on the circuits I’ve gone from zero stamina to nearly-got-stamina. It’s been almost exclusively on my board since the rain has been incessant in Scotland for the whole of May. Hence the lack of new routes to report. However, the focus has been good for me probably. My 60 move circuit is now extended to 100 moves and the rest between bouts are getting shorter every session.

Still much more work to be done, but with that under my belt and a good forecast at last it’s time to head north to Orkney and get on my project for a few days and try and remember how to trad climb. 

The forces of nature

Just when we thought the Scottish spring couldn’t get any worse, going climbing has been even more difficult of late. After a weekend in Glasgow and training indoors to hide from the 100mph winds, 60 odd fallen trees stood between us and home on the A82. The one below landed on the car and tanker, thankfully noone hurt and we proceeded to chainsaw it up and carry on.

Further up the road, fallen caravans marked the way across Rannoch Moor.

Yes, it used to be a caravan, until the Scottish conditions remodelled it.

So the tour of Scotland’s perma-dry sport crags continues. Even Steall an Tunnel Wall were soaking, so I checked out Am Fasgadh in Gruinard Bay for the first time with Gaz and Murdo. I was a fine little crag, and we managed half a session before the wind finally dropped and we received our first beating by the midges of the season. Before they stopped play, I managed an 8a+ second ascent (Stork’s ex project) and ticked some of the excellent 7bs and 7cs. It was so nice just to go climbing on some established routes for a day, and not have to bolt and scrub them first! I forgot how easy it is just to climb other peoples sport routes.

Endurance still has a long way to go, but some progress has been made and my appointment with my Orkney project is getting closer in my mind. Time to attack the board again today...

Murdo relaxing on Black Sox 7c, Am Fasgadh

Steall sessions

First ascent of The Fat Groove 8a, Steall

Two good sessions at Steall with Tweedley and Boswell. On day one I mostly put in bolts and scrubbed and was knackered. Net day, after baby class it was time to get actually climbing. I equipped a big diagonal groove cutting across my route Stolen and Running into the last part of Trick of the Tail (which is now bolted to the niche below the perma-wetness with permission from Mark at great 7b+). 

Being a groove I figured some bridging would be possible, which it was in places. The rest however was some powerful fingery undercutting with some technical dancing about on little smears, if that is the right word?

A little bit of grunt and I made it through to the superb upper section, with all sorts of funky groove moves going on. Brilliant. The other line I bolted won’t give up so easily I suspect.

Michael scrapping with The Gurrie 8a+

The whole time, it dumped it down with rain and fresh snow fell on Ben Nevis above us. I don't reckon too many other new routes got done in the western highlands today! Nice to see that other are enjoying the routes here recently as much as I have done. Niall and Alan both rating Stolen as possibly the best 8b or even 8 in the UK!!

Gore-Tex Arctic Norway trip competition

A project that’s been in the pipeline for a while has been a trip I’m planning with my sponsors Gore-Tex. It’s just launched so I can finally talk about it. So, would you like to come on a climbing trip to Arctic Norway with me?

The lowdown is on the Gore-Tex Experience Tour facebook page here, but here’s the rough plan: Gore-Tex have been running several competitions to go on some superb trips with their athletes and this year it’s my turn. Some of you might remember I was asking you for ideas for it months ago. We are going to go rock climbing, hopefully new routing, in northern Norway for two weeks in August. And we are looking for two climbers to win a place on the trip, courtesy of Gore-Tex!

I see a load of you have already clocked this on the Gore-Tex Experience Tour facebook page and applied! Great stuff and good luck. Looking forward to sharing a fine climbing trip with you. Please do post up on the wall with any more links you have to your climbing stories and pics to make my choice easier when it comes to the casting day!

A couple of personal things to say about the trip we have planned - 

First off please don't be afraid to apply! I know from experience of coaching climbers and doing talks etc that people sometimes get put off by the prospect of going climbing with someone you've 'heard of'. There's no need in this case. Climbing new routes in places where there's tons of rock offers endless possibilities and our objective is just to go climbing and have fun for a couple of weeks. We'll have no problems finding routes to climb that have however hard or easy climbing we are after. We'll choose the objectives when we get there and based on how we are all climbing. So it's flexible - the only hard and fast rules are that we will have an adventure, we will get rained on at some point, we will come home with tired arms and wide eyes. You get the picture..

If you make the shortlist and get invited to the casting day in July, basically the plan will be we'll meet up near a cliff somewhere in Europe for the weekend, I'll show a few slides and tell some climbing stories over a beer. The next day we'll climb and find out who is ideal for the trip but I'll also make sure we all have a good session of climbing coaching so everyone has a good and productive time.

Why Norway? Well, other than being a climbing paradise with nearly endless potential for adventurous new routing on every type of cliff, it's beautiful, off the beaten track and aside from an unpredictable climate there are no barriers to getting on the rock - it's everywhere! Depending on the team's desires, what grabs our eye when we arrive and whether the sun is out, we could climb sport routes, single pitch trad or some rather bigger walls. I'm sure there will be the odd bit of sessioning on perfect granite boulders too…

Can’t wait. You can apply until the 5th of June, here.

The turnaround grinding into action

I’m in the middle of the two-week hell that always accompanies the transition from boulderer to stamina monster. Stamina monster is definitely the wrong word right now! But the plan is that it will be. All the holds on Tunnel Wall feel so easy to pull on but I am still getting pumped on the laps. I feel like an overloaded plane trying to take off - Once I’m off the bumpy ground I can start going up. Oh well that’s how I like to think of it anyway. I think next week I might be fit enough for Steall...

New cycle begins

Gaz Marshall on Strongbow V7, Laggan (classic problem!)

The sprint to the finish line on Seven of Nine seems to have left me feeling rather burnt out. Or has it? For the past five days I’ve felt unexpectedly lethargic, sleepy and ineffective at more or less anything.

Time for a change of scenery. Almost every year I get a few days in both May and September when this happens. Whether it’s down to the change of season, natural cycles of training or something else, who knows. It doesn’t matter. It only lasts a few days and then I usually feel good again. This morning I woke up feeling normal again and psyched to start the routes season after yesterday’s false start.

After sessions at Laggan, running laps on Sky Pilot for Cubby’s camera and then a day of failing miserably to climb anything at Tunnel Wall, I can see it’s time to phase out the boulders and start getting pumped on routes. I’ve got 6 weeks to get in shape for the start of the route project period. I’ll start off with a bit of Tunnel Wall and Steall, and then hopefully a bit of tradding. It’ll be interesting to see how quick the transition from strong to fit goes.

Nice unclimbed overhang

Boulder hunting

Laggan outlook

Tunnel Wall and the Coe